Promoting, advancing and defending Intelligent Design via data, logic and Intelligent Reasoning and exposing the theory of evolution as the nonsense it is.
I also educate evotards about ID and the theory of evolution one tard at a time and sometimes in groups

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Mysterious Definition of Nested Hierarchy?

David Kellogg believes that I am unable to be reasoned with because he told me, without any support, that the few evolutionary scientists I disagree with pertaining to nested hierarchy and the theory of evolution, use a different definition of a nested hierarchy.

Well, I don't think evolution as such predicts a nested hierarchy. But if complex beings such as ourselves are the result of evolution, then a nested hierarchy would indeed be expected, looking backward from there. As the Oxford Encyclopedia of Evolution puts it, "the nested hierarchies in Linnaean classifications are consistent with an explanation that involves common ancestry and the divergence of related groups. Common ancestry provided an explanation for more inclusive taxa and divergence from that common ancestry provided a rationale for the subdivision of those more inclusive taxa into less inclusive taxa."

It is also worth repeating that nested hierarchy was FIRST used as evidence for a common design and all evos did when they took over was to replace archetype with common ancestor:

One would expect a priori that such a complete change of the philosophical bias of classification would result in a radical change of classification, but this was by no means the case. There was hardly and change in method before and after Darwin, except that "archetype" was replaced by the common ancestor.-- Ernst Mayr-

Simpson echoed those comments:

From their classifications alone, it is practically impossible to tell whether zoologists of the middle decades of the nineteenth century were evolutionists or not. The common ancestor was at first, and in most cases, just as hypothetical as the archetype, and the methods of inference were much the same for both, so that classification continued to develop with no immediate evidence of the revolution in principles….the hierarchy looked the same as before even if it meant something totally different.-

IOW nested hierarchy was and is used as evidence for Common Design.

With Common Descent traits can be gained and lost. And seeing that biological classification is done via traits, well any normal person would understand the implications.